


Dead End

by MycroftRH



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: ACAB except Jim Gordon and Dick Grayson, Blanket Permission, Gen, Gothamite Culture, Podfic Welcome, Police Brutality, Rated T for Trashmouth, We Used To Be Friends (A Long Time Ago)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-29
Updated: 2020-01-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:42:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22461319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MycroftRH/pseuds/MycroftRH
Summary: Two-Face is sent down a dark alley by a coinflip, and it looks like it might be his last.
Relationships: Harvey Dent & Bruce Wayne
Comments: 1
Kudos: 24





	Dead End

"Go out the back, boss! I'll hold 'em off!"

Two-Face didn't pause a second to consider his employee's likely fate. He ducked under the glare of the searchlight stabbing in through the windows and ran in a hunch through the sharply delineated darkness lit only by intermittent flashes of red and blue. Pausing to open the cellar door he vaguely heard something shouted over a loudspeaker reverberate through the walls of the safehouse. Not so safe. Someone would be paying for that. He heard a crash of breaking glass as he dropped through the door and slammed the steel bolt across. Even the shittiest safehouse has a trick to cover your escape route.

He ran down the tunnel, knocking over empty unlabelled Prohibition-era bottles. He could not just hear but feel when he went right under the feet of the cops, their sirens shaking dust from the walls. It was far too shortly after that when the tunnel came to an end with a rusty ladder reaching up towards a few chinks of light.

"Shit!" A century-old metal rung snapped under his weight but he caught himself with his hands. He shoved the door open, a nondescript basement door by a failing sushi restaurant, looked left and right and scrambled out onto the drizzle-slick street. A burst of gunfire shook the air, then another. It was joined by the sound of police semi-automatics. The single patron of the sushi place glanced up from his paper for a moment then back down. Any Gothamite can pinpoint the distance of gunfire down to the block. The rattle of the fully automatic weapon, the one that Two-Face had left in his employee's hands, suddenly cut off, and a moment later the cops' fire silenced as well. His employee was now his late employee. Well, that was one less Christmas bonus to shell out for.

He ducked his head and started to walk calmly down the street. His face wasn't exactly an aid in subtlety, but at least he was in a plain suit today. With luck, luck and Gotham citizens' trained blindness towards anyone with an appearance ranging towards the villainous, he should be able to get to some house safer than the last one.

"Fuck-Face! Hands in the air and down on the ground!"

Two-Face didn't wait til the end of the sentence before bolting, scarred skin on his leg pulling painfully and feet slipping in his expensive shoes. Profanity followed him and judging from the volume so did the cop. Two-Face skidded around the corner onto a traffic-filled street and sprinted down the center between lines of near-parked cars. He saw another side-street and ran for it, stumbling on the turn and ripping the sole of his shoe loose. He kicked the shoe off viciously before limping further down the side-street lit only by oil-slick dribbles of red, perpetually damp sidewalk reflecting the neon signs of the larger street behind.

The street ended harshly with a chain-link fence and Two-Face leaned against it, panting, holding himself up with fingers hooked through the wire. The tar-black entrance of an alley, too narrow for a car, stained the line of buildings to his left. He looked between it and the head-high fence, looked down at his foot, already bloody from broken glass. Closed his eyes. Reached into his pocket.

He could barely see the coin in the darkness, but he could have used it blindfolded. He flipped it into the air - watched it rise, hit a glint of light at the apex of its arc, flicker silver - and a gunshot blasted past his ear.

He shoved away from the fence and lurched into the black opening of the alley, eyes scarcely adjusting, felt thick wetness splatter his ankle but didn't check to see if it was Gotham gutter-sludge or blood. He bounced his hand off the brick alley wall to support himself and - nearly collided with another wall in front of his face. His heart had been slamming against his ribs since the first sirens announced the raid at the safehouse, his damaged lungs aching since the first run from the sushi counter-serve, but now his head felt light and dizzy. He looked with blurred eyes up at the wall - the side of a building - no fire escape, no window below the third floor. He turned, slowly, every muscle trying to delay.

"Hey, Fuck-Face." A cop stood at the entrance of the alley, framed by the trickle of light from behind, his gun out, the barrel lined up with Two-Face's chest. Center mass.

"Your guy back there shot at us. You know what that means." A few Joker-white teeth caught the light as the cop's mouth pulled into a grin. "Means anything I do now is self-defense. I bet I'll get a promotion for making sure Big-Shot Two-Face stops popping out through Arkham's revolving door. Might even get in line for clean-as-piss Gordon's job. Bet we could actually get something done in this city without him dragging us down."

The cop raised his other arm to brace against the kickback. Two-Face closed his eyes and waited for the crack of the gunshot.

A far-too-familiar thud of Kevlar blend against flesh, and Two-Face opened his eyes to see the cop slowly crumple to the ground, unconscious. An outline that every person in Gotham knows, an outline that shines in the sky more nights than not, stood black against the street's faint light.

The figure stepped forward and resolved from a primordially terrifying silhouette into a man. A Batman. Two-Face stood silent, brain not yet adjusted to having not been blown out across the alley wall. Batman reached down and took something from the unconscious cop's hand, then reached into his own belt and pulled out something else very similar. He came to Two-Face and stood, a few feet away, blank white lenses gazing at him as his lungs fought between panting for oxygen and constricting to not let him breathe at all. Kevlar-coated hands reached up and pulled down Batman's horned cowl.

Two-Face looked up into Bruce Wayne's eyes. Then down as a hand reached out to him, two circles of metal balanced on it. A coin, smooth head up, and a scratched and battered pin-backed button, hints of red and blue barely visible in the darkness. As Two-Face's fingers closed over the cool metal, Bruce spoke, his voice human, far from the Batman's demonic gravel.

"I still believe in Harvey Dent."

**Author's Note:**

> I leave it up to you exactly what happened next - whether Bruce dragged Harvey to Arkham to try at rehabilitation yet again or whether he let him go, just this once, counting bloody feet and a near death experience as time served.
> 
> "Clean-as-piss" is, to the best of my knowledge, not an actual expression. I created it as a Gothamite term used to make a comparison to something that's theoretically clean - near-sterile - but in practice you'd never consider to be clean. Usage: "The new mayor's clean as piss. It may look clear as water but it'll start to smell before too long." Basically means that someone/something's putting up a front of integrity and respectability, and may even technically not be breaking any laws, but absolutely no one thinks it's genuine. I figure in a city with as much rampant corruption as Gotham, people would come up with specialized terms for the different flavors of it, ya know?


End file.
